Christmas Traditions

Primary service project

decorating Grammy & Poppa's tree at the MH

Visiting Santa

getting together with friends

looking at the Christmas lights on Via Cristal in SJC

last day of school projects

leaving treats for Santa



waiting to come downstairs in the morning



opening presents

setting the table

having the first bites of "Moysa Family Stuffing"

playing in the cousins concert


All the cousins performing in "their show"

Hope you all had a very joyous holiday

Honolulu City Lights

Every year downtown Honolulu becomes a wonderland of lights. Everything is decorated! It's the most beautiful sight. Really does get people into the Christmas Spirit. Every City & County Department is decorated. There's a tree/gingerbread decorating contest that is displayed in Honolulu Hale (city hall). Each dept. decorates a tree and a house following a theme.

The most amazing part of all of this is that most of the big buildings downtown have some type of lighting or decorations on them. There are special tours that drive around, but we just drove around in my car. People actually don't mind if you stop and take pictures! So lucky we live Hawaii.

Mele Kalikimaka

Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas~ Waikiki

Last week my neighbor and I went into Waikiki to look at the Christmas decorations in the big hotels. I'd seen them before, but thought she'd like to walk through and look at some of them. It really is something to see, Waikiki all decked out for Christmas.

The Princess Kai'ulani had the most fabulous display! This tree was decorated with pikake lei, silver and turquoise peacocks. The peacocks were to symbolize the Princess' favorite bird.

They also a this gingerbread village. The detail was breath taking. The chefs spent over 250 hours making it.

It was huge...took up a large part of the lobby
Kings Village decked out for Christmas

The Moana


The Moana and her columns

The Hyatt Regency...their display took two floors

Upstairs at the Hyatt

The Hyatt

Outrigger Waikiki, Upper Lobby

Close-up of some of the decorations at the Outrigger

Mele Kalikimaka~ Only In Hawaii

Santa giving the shakka sign downtown Santa arrives in an outrigger canoe

Santa wears a lei at Ala Moana

Christmas trees are kept in refrigerated containers, and every year all the tress are sold...no lonely trees here!

Final Greyson Hawaii post

I was just sorting some pictures and realized that I hadn't posted some pictues of Greyson on one of our trips to Turtle Bay.

Eating push-up at Olas after lunch helping with the umbrella "Beach Boy Style"

this made me almost cry...he's actually checking out the waves! he was ready to go!

his first ride on a board~he loved it.

Bri catching up on "Twilight"

Rain, Rain and more rain

It's still raining. We had a little break yesterday, but it started up again. With all of this rain has come more flooding. On Thursday, when all the flooding happened in Waialua there had been 12 inches of rain at Scholfield...all that water had to go somewhere. It's so much rain coming and the water can't soak into the ground.

We know that we're luckier than a lot of people. Our laundry room as flooded twice now. We tried sand-bagging after the first time, but it's coming in from someplace else. Hubby will try again today. We heard last night that Haleiwa was starting to flood again and a couple of the streams here were going over the road. We've seen the Civil Defense, Army and C&C crews out working long hard hours. It's so slow going.

Here are some links to other blogs and the newspaper that have some really good pictures of the whole north shore and all the water. Go here, sorry I don't know how to make it not so big ) http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=M1&Dato=20081211&Kategori=NEWS&Lopenr=812120803&Ref=PH


and here:http://ashleymoffat.blogspot.com/
and here:http://smileybrylie.blogspot.com/2008/12/give-said-little-stream.html

can someone explain to me how to not have the whole long link appear? Anyway, both of these blogs can give you an idea of the whole situation here on the north shore. Just so much water. Yes, it's raining right now, but there's some wind, so maybe it's pushing the storm through!

FLASH FLOOD WARNING

Last night the National Weather Service issued a Flash Flood Watch that was upgraded to a warning. I had to go into Haleiwa today, but turned around when I realized how bad it was. Kam Hiway into Wahiawa is closed. Kam Hiway towards Kahuku is closed and so is Kaukonahua, so we're pretty much cut off (which really can be a good thing). The rivers are over flowing onto the roads, which leads them to have rushing deep water going across the road. I snapped a few pictures to get an idea of what it looks like.

I had tried to get back home (1 mile away), but took this picture right before they closed this down. This was the last bus to cross. This river caused this...
the area where the shrimp trucks are is flooded and things are washing away out into the ocean.

This river is moving so fast (those dark things are huge pieces of rubbish ) under here...

Anahulu Bridge (or Rainbow bridge) (note how close it is to the bottom of the bridge) that it caused this...

a canoe being washed out to sea because the river ate into the canoe club's area where they have their canoes stored. I watched as two guys on paddle boards went up the beach, towards Puena Point and paddled out to it. This was a big 6 -man canoe. Not sure how they were going to get it into shore.

Hubby is flying in today from Oakland. Not sure he'll be able to get out here. Hope so. All the schools are closed in the area because of all the flooding. If it just stops raining for a little bit, a lot of the water will go away. Hubby took down our tarp before he left because he heard on the news there would be high winds, and there were last night.

So it's a good day to try and get some stuff done around here, just need the wrapping paper, Christmas cards and ribbon!

Aweoaweo Beach Park

One morning while Geoff and Bri were here we went to Aweoaweo Beach Park to take some pictures for their Christmas card. These are just a few of the many, many I took. The haze in the background is because of the big surf. Bri actually ordered their cards and picked them up at Costco while they were here.

That's looking towards Waimea in the background

gotta love that face...he just wanted to play in the water!

Hawaiian Skater

The other day the kids went to the lagoons at Ko'olina on the east side because of the high surf over here. You'll have to check out their blog for some great photos of that little trip when they get posted. When they got back we were in the yard and somebody had a skateboard...Greyson watched for awhile and then was ready. Bri said she could see her future before her... lots of sports and daredevil stuff.

Checkin' it out with dad

he knew all about standing on itOff they went
he loved the speed, wish you could see his smile

it sort of looked like this